Justice Department oversight of Buffalo Police Department is about to end
Reforms in place, police contend
The federal government has been overseeing a reform effort in the Buffalo Police Department since 2002, following citizens’ allegations of police brutality and misuse of pepper spray.
But police and federal officials have shared little information about that effort with the people of Buffalo, critics of the department say.
And on July 9, the Police Department’s agreement with the U. S. Justice Department is scheduled to expire.
Police Commissioner H. McCarthy Gipson insists his department has made solid progress, greatly improving procedures for investigating citizen complaints. He said officers no longer need to have federal officials looking over their shoulders.
Yet some community activists, a civil rights advocate and at least one public officeholder strongly disagree. They argue that the federal oversight should not only be extended, but expanded.
These are a few of the dozens of changes the police force pledged to make nearly six years ago:
• All police officers will be given eight hours of training on pepper spray, and how to use “verbal de-escalation techniques” to avoid using pepper spray or physical force.
• The Police Department will maintain a database, tracking each officer’s history of excessive force complaints and the outcome of those complaints.
• Information in the database will be used to detect trends of officer complaints, and when needed, to take non-punitive action to prevent misconduct by officers.
• Any person who wants to make a complaint against a police officer can have his or her complaint videotaped and receive a transcript.
• Investigations into complaints about officers will be completed by the Professional Standards Division within 45 days, unless the commissioner grants an extension.
“I would like to get out from under the Justice Department’s oversight,” Gipson said in an interview last week. “The oversight has served its purpose. The department is doing the things we need to do, and that will continue.”
Community activist Samuel Radford III and Erie County Legislator Betty Jean Grant want the government oversight to continue.
“In some areas, the police have improved since this agreement was signed,” said Radford, Buffalo co-chairman of the Millions More Movement, a nationwide organization focusing on issues of concern to black Americans.
“In some areas, they have not improved. I still believe police officers in this city will lie and cover up to protect each other when a complaint is made.”
To Grant, a Democrat who represents an inner-city district, the federal program is “a charade” because so few people know about it.
“You’ve had a program in place for six years. The government has made no effort to tell people about it, or how it was going. Now you’re stopping the program,” Grant said. “The Justice Department should publicize it, let people know what it’s all about, and then extend it for at least a year.”
Gipson said that, since becoming commissioner in 2006, he has made efforts to publicize the changes. He said the procedures for citizens to file complaints against officers are posted in all police stations and on the Police Department’s Web site. Statistical information about excessive force complaints against officers is also on the site. Police officials also noted that the agreement was publicized in a news release and news conference in September 2002.
The agreement also called for appointment of a reviewer to monitor the Police Department’s progress on a regular basis and report it to the Justice Department.
Fewer complaints
According to Gipson and officials of the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association, complaints of excessive use of force by officers have dropped sharply since the federal monitoring began.
“I challenge you to name the last police brutality case that saw the public side of a state or federal grand jury,” said Thomas H. Burton, an attorney for the police union. “It’s a tremendous tribute to the officers who patrol the city.”
The most recent major controversy involving a police brutality allegation in Buffalo was the November 2006 case involving David N. Mack, 55, of Walden Avenue, who claimed he was beaten by police investigating a domestic call at his home.
Police vehemently deny that Mack — who has filed a lawsuit — was brutalized. The incident resulted in the firing last month of Cariol Horne, an officer who sided with Mack.
Charges against Mack were dismissed from that 2006 arrest, but he was convicted last week of resisting arrest in relation to another incident.
There have been few other police brutality allegations made publicly in this decade. But between 2002 and 2006, eight former city narcotics detectives were convicted of corruption crimes. Some of those crimes involved the unlawful use of weapons or physical violence.
According to police, the department received four complaints last year of wrongdoing in police-involved shootings, 45 complaints of excessive use of physical force by officers and one complaint of improper use of pepper spray.
While comparison statistics for 2002 and earlier years were not available, police spokesman Michael J. De- George said the numbers are down significantly from the time before the federal monitoring began.
While acknowledging that official brutality complaints appear to be down, critics say that has occurred because many city residents are either afraid of police or don’t trust the department to thoroughly investigate their complaints.
Buffalo police cannot be trusted to investigate and regulate themselves when allegations of police misconduct are made, according to Radford and Grant, an East Side resident since 1970.
“I don’t know if police brutality is a widespread problem, but I do know a lot of people who have little confidence that the police can police themselves,” Grant said.
Both the Buffalo police and the Justice Department have done a “very poor job” of informing and educating the public about the reform plan, said John A. Curr III, director of the Buffalo office of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
He said he believes many people in Buffalo have no idea how to file a complaint against a police officer.
Radford said he has information that the police force has not reached many of the goals established when the police force signed its agreement with the Justice Department in September 2002.
Gipson insisted that the Police Department has met most, if not all, of the goals.
Report being written
So far, Justice Department officials have declined to say whether they think the goals have been met or if the agreement should be extended. A reporter’s calls were referred to Jamie Hais, a Justice Department spokeswoman in Washington, who said she could not comment.
Radford said he attended a meeting last fall with Martin Floss, the man appointed to review the program’s progress and report on it to the federal government. Floss is also the director of the Institute for Law & Justice at Hilbert College.
“At that meeting, Marty Floss said the Buffalo police had only met 22 of the 45 goals set out in the agreement,” Radford said. “I want to know, where do they stand on the 45 goals now? The Justice Department should put out a report saying exactly where they do stand.”
Through a spokeswoman at Hilbert, Floss said he is working on such a report. Floss said he is not, at this point, allowed to speak with the news media about it.
“He is in the process of writing the final report, and as of now, he is prepared to sign off on the department’s successful completion of the agreement,” said Paula Witherell, the Hilbert spokeswoman.
The federal probe that led to the agreement began in 1997, when FBI agents looked into citizen claims that Buffalo officers were using pepper spray to torture defendants. Police officials vehemently denied the allegations.
The noncriminal investigation was expanded to look into how the department handled complaints of brutality and other police misconduct.
In November 1999, then-Police Commissioner Rocco J. Diina complained bitterly and publicly that federal agents and prosecutors working on the case were unfairly targeting his department.
“I have a responsibility to defend this department against unfair criticism,” Diina said at the time. “These [federal agents] came in here to put a few notches in their belts.”
But Diina eventually signed his name to the agreement on Sept. 19, 2002. The agreement was scheduled to end last year.
But in July 2007, it was extended for a year so police could continue their reform efforts.
PBA President Robert P. Meegan Jr. said he “reluctantly” signed the agreement and now feels it was never needed in the first place.
“The Justice Department forced it on the city. I don’t think anyone likes to be second-guessed, especially when they do the dangerous work that our officers do on the streets of Buffalo every day,” Meegan said last week. “I know a lot of officers shelved their pepper spray after the agreement was signed, and I don’t know if that is a good thing for anyone. I think it’s safer for a defendant to be pepper-sprayed than to be hit in the head with a nightstick.”
Meegan added: “I don’t know of one case where the federal government has cited our department for mishandling a complaint since they got here. . . . I think the money for this program could be better spent on bringing down the federal deficit.”
Curr, from the civil liberties union, disagrees with Meegan’s contention that less oversight is a good thing.
“We don’t have the kind of police brutality problems that you have in New York City or some other places,” Curr said. “But I think we need more meaningful oversight of the police, not less oversight.”
